Immortal but
Unknown

Edward Winter

(1988, with updates)

One way in which an ordinary amateur can become a chess immortal
is by being in the right place at the right time. If, for
instance, he is on the scene just as a new prodigy emerges, even
an inglorious defeat will perpetuate his memory. A case in point
is Juan Corzo, for whom the right place and time were Havana 1901,
when he lost an historic match to the young Capablanca. Two of
Corzo’s defeats are among the most celebrated games in literature,
and his name will be remembered as long as chess is played.

But despite this, and to say nothing of the further publicity he
gained by being on the sharp end of a Capablanca brilliancy prize
game in the Havana, 1913 tournament, Corzo’s immortality clearly
has its limits. Hardly anyone nowadays knows anything about him,
and it is not easy to find out more. Investigations are hindered
by the erratic nature of Cuban periodical literature, which is all
fits and starts. Time and again, new chess journals have wobbled
along to an early grave, and throughout most of Corzo’s life the
country was without any specialized magazine. Chess books appeared
at the rate of two or three a decade; Corzo wrote none and none
wrote about Corzo.

Juan Corzo y Príncipe was born in Madrid on 24 June 1873 but
moved to Cuba when he was in his mid-teens. The first serious
event in which he appears to have participated was the
championship of the Havana Chess Club in 1896. He came fourth but
won the brilliancy prize for his game against Manuel Golmayo:

Source: Ajedrez en Cuba by C. Palacio (Havana, 1960),
pages 265-266. The game was also annotated by Janowsky on pages
233-234 of La Stratégie, 15 August 1897. He described 21
Bxf7+ as a ‘très jolie terminaison’.

Manuel Golmayo’s father was Celso Golmayo y Zúpide, who had been
generally accepted as Cuban champion since his 1862 match defeat
of Félix Sicre. Celso did not play in the 1897 national
championship tournament, but his title stayed in the family
because another son, Celsito, was declared champion after a
play-off against Andrés Clemente Vázquez. Although Corzo finished
only fourth, he was evidently improving rapidly; in the following
year’s tournament he won the national title outright. There was no
immediate call for him to defend it.

Juan Corzo

In early 1900 Corzo played two matches against Vázquez in Havana,
winning the first +4 –0 =0 whereas Vázquez won the second +7 –5
=6. The latter contest was suspended on 19 March (when the score
stood at +5 –5 =3) for a visit by Pillsbury. Play between Corzo
and Vázquez resumed on 24 March and finished on 30 March.These
details, together with the five sample games below, are taken from
La Stratégie, which had extensive coverage of the matches
(15 March 1900, pages 65-67; 15 April 1900, page 115; 15 May 1900,
pages 137-143 and page 148; 15 June 1900, pages 170-178). Since
the games were contested less than two years before the Capablanca
v Corzo series, it is of interest to witness Corzo’s level of
play.

Juan Corzo – Andrés Clemente Vázquez
First game of the first match, Havana, 2 February 1900
Sicilian Defence

After winning two informal games against Capablanca in
September/October 1901, Corzo faced the prodigy in the now famous
match, which lasted from 17 November to 18 December 1901 and ended
in victory for Capablanca by +4 –3 =6. It used to be feared that
only the two games Capablanca published in My Chess Career
had survived, but the remaining scores have since trickled into
circulation, largely thanks to the research of Miguel Alemán, E.W.
Axe, James Gilchrist and Paul Leith. A number appeared in the BCM
in 1960 and two subsequent books published the full set: Los
niños prodigio del ajedrez by Pablo Morán (Barcelona, 1973)
and The Unknown Capablanca by David Hooper and Dale
Brandreth (London, 1975). The latter work gave the clock times,
showing that Capablanca played at an average speed of 90 moves an
hour.

The exact status of the match is debatable. Capablanca wrote in My
Chess Career, ‘the victory made me, morally at least, the
champion of Cuba’, but in the Buenos Aires newspaper La
Crítica of 19 September 1927 he remarked after his first
match game against Alekhine in the world championship: ‘Since my
first match, with Corzo for the Cuban Championship, when I was 12
years of age, this is the first time in a match that my opponent
has taken the lead, which does at least have the merit of a
novelty.’ Corzo’s view on the 1901 match was that they were
‘offhand games’ (El Fígaro, 25 April 1909, page 219).

Finally, it is worth noting that even today the year of the match
is often wrongly given as 1900, whereas the correct date, 1901, is
confirmed by local newspaper reports. The error may be traced back
to the games index of My Chess Career.

In 1902 Corzo retained/regained his national title in a
double-round championship tournament, finishing 2½ points ahead of
his brother Enrique, and four ahead of Capablanca, who came only
fourth. Corzo won both of his individual games against the
prodigy, but the scores seem to have been lost.

It is almost certain that another celebrated Corzo v Capablanca
brilliancy (game 2a in Reinfeld’s The Immortal Games of
Capablanca) did not involve Juan Corzo at all, despite that
attribution on page 136 of The Unknown Capablanca.
Although the Cuban newspaper Diario de la Marina of 5
February 1902 (evening edition, page 4) claimed that White was
Juan Corzo, Juan himself said in the Mexican magazine Ajedrez
of February 1938 (page 129) that Capablanca’s opponent had
been his brother, Enrique (who had died in the early 1930s).

Ajedrez en Cuba, a scarce book by Carlos Palacio published
in Havana in 1960, lists further match results of Juan Corzo: v
Ramón Iglesias (1897) +5 –0 =1; v Rafael Blanco (1911) +5 –0 =0.
The American Chess Bulletin of May 1912 (page 106)
mentions another match against Iglesias, played in 1901, Corzo
winning +7 –5 =2. This source also says that Corzo had won casual
games from Dr Lasker and Taubenhaus. A number of games between
Lasker and Corzo were given in The Collected Games of Emanuel
Lasker by K. Whyld, published in 1998.

The following correspondence game against the ‘Club Capablanca’
of Placetas, taken from Crónica de Ajedrez of August 1911
(pages 82-83), is a good example of Corzo’s aggressive style,
although here it is unsuccessful. The annotations (written before
5...d5 was discovered – see page 158 of Kings, Commoners and
Knaves) are by Corzo:

Club Capablanca – Juan Corzo
Correspondence game
Danish Gambit

1 e4 e5 2 d4 exd4 3 c3 dxc3 4 Bc4 cxb2 (‘The theorists consider
that it is dangerous to accept the third pawn. Nonetheless in
practice the position is defendable and Mieses, that great
advocate of the Danish Gambit, has suffered reverses, such as the
game he lost to Maróczy in the Paris tournament of 1900, which
seem to demonstrate quite the opposite. In other words, the danger
involved in playing this opening is greater for White than for
Black.’) 5 Bxb2 d6 6 Nf3 Qe7 7 O-O Be6 8 Qb3 Nd7 9 Bxe6 Qxe6 (‘A
fundamental error. 9...fxe6, followed by 10...Nc5 would have given
Black a solid position.) 10 Qxb7 Rb8 (‘When I played this move I
saw the attack with which I should be confronted, but I preferred
a rapid death to the kind that would have awaited me if I had
played 10...Nb6 or some similar move leaving me with the same
number of pawns and an inferior position.’) 11 Qxc7 Rxb2 12 Qc8+
Ke7 13 Nd4 Qxe4 14 Nc6+ Kf6 15 Qxd7 (‘15 Nc3, and if 15...Qf5 then
16 Rad1, would seem very strong.’) 15...Rc2 16 Nxa7 d5

Four years later Juan Corzo came second in a small triangular
tournament in the Cuban capital, half a point behind C.S. Howell
and half a point ahead of Blanco.

Corzo was a prolific journalist who wrote columns in a variety of
publications over a 30-year period. His weekly column in the Cuban
magazine E1 Fígaro was particularly rich, frequently
containing four or five games, two problems and general chess
news, all spread out over a full page. He also played a key role
in Capablanca-Magazine, which enjoyed a relatively long
run (1912 to 1914). Corzo was described as the Administrador.

A good illustration of his play during this period was published
in Capablanca-Magazine of 31 December 1913 (pages
235-236):

Not long afterwards, Corzo embarked upon a new literary venture.
This paragraph appeared on page 463 of the November 1933 BCM:

‘In spite of political troubles, Juan Corzo, ex-champion of the
Havana Chess Club, has succeeded in bringing out the first
(September) number of a new monthly, Jaque Mate, at the
price of $1 a year. Most of the space in this opening issue is
given to the games of the historic match Corzo-Capablanca at the
end of 1901, begun just before Capablanca’s 13th birthday. There
is also an article on “World Champions from Ruy López to
Alekhine”.’

Despite considerable efforts, it has proved impossible to trace
this magazine, or even to find a reference to it in any Cuban
source. (It is unconnected with the Jaque Mate published
in Havana in the 1960s and 1970s.)

The name of Corzo was seldom seen in print during the 1930s,
although he contributed a brief analytical article on the game
between Sir George Thomas and Vera Menchik, Hastings, 1934-35 on
pages 364-365 of El Ajedrez Español, August 1935. See also
pages 485-490 of the December 1935 issue.

Juan Corzo

Corzo is such an obscure figure that it is appropriate that there
should even have been confusion over when he died. In reference
books the date was regularly given as 27 September 1938 until it
was pointed out in C.N. 1085 that the October/November 1944 issue
of Capablanca Magazine and issues 7, 8 and 9 of Jaque
Mate 1964 contained photographs of Corzo taken on 13 April
1940 and 21 March 1941.

It turned out that Corzo died, in Havana, on 27 September 1941.
Capablanca survived him by just five months.

Afterword: This original version of the above article was
published on pages 76-78 of the 8/1988 New in Chess.

Eduardo Bauzá Mercére (New York, NY, USA) forwards a game
(Havana, 1936) between Juan Corzo and José Antonio Gelabert which
the former published on page 129 of the 8/1937 issue of the
Argentinian magazine Castles: